Subject: RE: (urth) Marc's smoking gun?
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 15:19:43 -0700
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes"
Don Doggett wrote:
> So again I ask, why did time stop on the Whorl?
Ummm ... I don't think it did. Silk had an experience which=20
took place outside of Time, i.e., in Eternity, the perspective
from which the Outsider (=3D=3Dthe Christian God) views spacetime.
Thus, while he experienced the passage of time in his personal=20
consciousness, the "time" that passed for him had no meaning=20
on the Whorl or, presumably, the rest of spacetime.=20
Think of it like this. Silk (like the rest of us) watches
spacetime occurring in an orderly fashion, rather like someone
particpating in an interactive computer game, one where the
player participates _as_ a character. Then the phone rings --
the Outsider "calls," and the game goes into "pause" mode,
while the Outsider tells Silk a number of things -- including,
as it happens, some "spoiler" information about the game=20
itself. When the call ends, the game comes out of "pause"
mode, and continues exactly as it had been. No time has=20
passed in the game, but no time has been skipped or lost in
the game either; the time the player has spent on the call
has nothing to do with the internal time of the game. Similarly,
the seeming duration of Silk's enlightenment has nothing to do
with the "passage" of "time" in the spacetime universe.
H'mmm: the Long Sun books may have a place as the first SF=20
novels ever to successfully exploit _both_ Einsteinian=20
spacetime _and_ the relationship Christianity describes between=20
the realms of Time and Eternity.
My brain hurts.
--Blattid
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